


Rate of Return

by thegoddamnknightshade



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 15:20:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6244966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegoddamnknightshade/pseuds/thegoddamnknightshade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Josephine believes in a reasonable rate of return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rate of Return

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Heliantheia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heliantheia/gifts).



In Haven, when Josie first joins the Inquisition, she pays her own way. The letters and invitations she writes are on her own stationery, the pale gold of the parchment marked with her own monogram; there hasn’t been time to create an Inquisition letterhead, let alone the time to have scribes draw it onto as many sheets of parchment as she will eventually require. From the first, her name is linked to that of Justinia’s fledgling Inquisition. Like a father at a birthing bed, Josie provides for the Herald’s growing flock: here a letter asking for protection, there a letter asking for gold. When all it takes is ten coppers to trade a city for another, even a handful of silver is a help.

She pays the laundress who cares for her silken gowns, and for the chef who prepares food for noble guests. Josie works closely with Threnn to manage supply lines, to make sure there are guides to greet each noble and each pilgrim. Even the wax sticks she uses to seal the letters that speak of the Herald are her own, brought to her at high cost from Antiva City. Though the Inquisition coffers do not overflow with gold, it is important that they appear to: For the Herald, who is doing their level best, and for the pilgrims who look to the Inquisition for protection. There must always be an appearance of affluence if one is to acquire political power; this she learned at her mother’s knee. 

Some can leverage poverty. A heretical paramilitary group is not among their number.

Despite the disrespect leveled at her from Cullen’s end of the war table, despite the terrible conditions of an ancient, drafty Chantry, Josephine is starting to pull something together from the ashes of the Conclave. She knows she can make this work; she has been training her entire life to pull something from nothing. Her mother calls her to come home, to tend to the family business, but some things are more important than family. The safety of the world is one of them.

“I can do this,” says Josephine, in one letter after another. “I believe we are doing something worthwhile, something important.” She has one eye on the present and one eye on the future, one where Sister Nightingale and the Right Hand of the Divine owe Josie the sorts of favors that restore empty treasuries and drive off creditors out-of-hand. Leliana would never ask Josie to do something without getting something in return, after all...

With a few bright words and smiling eyes, she soothes the Marquis du Rellion, draws small groups of aristocrats to the Ferelden wilderness, and shows them how the Inquisition can grow. She builds castles with her words and an image of a glorious future where the Breach has been sealed.

Leliana calls her innocent, naive. Cullen derides her as a little girl playing dolls. When the Herald asks Josie for what she believes in, Josie levels a whiskey-eyed stare at them and says, “Herald, I believe in a reasonable rate of return.”

In the aftermath of Haven, Josephine labors along in her blood-and-ash-streaked gown through snow drifts that come to her knees. They have offered her a place in one of the few wagons that could fit along the deer trail that they used to escape the avalanche, but there are injured and Josephine is not among them. She treks alongside soldiers and pilgrims and prays that they shall make it through the night. With her mouth she professes faith in Cullen, in the fortitude of pilgrims, but her heart is not in it. She has made a gamble, and she has failed.

She doesn’t truly believe they’ll even live to see the sunrise until the Herald crests the hill behind them. They are framed, picturesque, a hero from a childhood story, by the jut of two sheer cliffs. Legs akimbo, they stand, the right pauldron of their armor gone, the left glove, pieces loose and grating so loud they can be heard over the camp noises. Josie hears Cullen shout, sees Cassandra break into a sprint, and then the Herald falls to their knees.

When they make it to Skyhold, it’s all Josie can do to stay upright. They don’t even wait to ensure their wounded are cared for; they inaugurate the Herald as the Inquisitor right there, even before stepping within the great keep of the ancient castle. 

It is a nightmare.

On paper, Skyhold is wonderful. Cullen cannot stop complimenting the place where it has been built: high, high in the mountains, only one approach, enemies could be seen for miles. There are no cradling peaks to conceal an invading force, no forests to hide their torches. Leliana loves the drama of the long, single bridge, the practicality of the many secret entrances. Josie despairs over the lack of trade routes, the coming difficulties of persuading merchants to come so far out of their way. Skyhold sits in the middle of nothing and no-where. It is its own peak, with no trade routes; the Herald says, how was a place like this ever lost, and Josie wonders how it could have been founded. 

Ser Morris is no Threnn. He hasn’t pulled together an army’s worth of rations from a Blighted land like she had, but it’s Josie who had to argue for Threnn to be replaced. Not because of any problem with the woman’s work, but because the Inquisition needed Orlesian support now. It couldn’t feed itself the same way it had in Haven; it couldn’t arm itself the same way, either. Even as she thanked Threnn for her service, Josie thought: This is the first sacrifice I make, a talented woman for a nervous, childish man.

So she works hard to overcome his inexperience, reaching out her ever-growing arms to gather the nobility of Orlais, of the Free Marches, of even Ferelden into the Inquisition’s bosom. There is no road to Skyhold; she takes soldiers from Cullen and sees one built. There are no horses, no guides for messengers; she persuades Leliana to train them, and Horsemaster Dennet to mount them. They all see parties, manipulation, and Josie does that and does it well, but she does ever so much more, too.

She still writes her mother, still says, “I can do this.” And she can, but it wears on her. The Inquisitor makes requests like her job is simple, and Josie smiles and says, “Of course.” She arranges parties on the fly, hosts the new allies the Inquisitor brings home from places as far-flung as the Frostback Basin and the Hissing Wastes. Josie makes sure the guest apartments are clean and aired out. Josie bullies Cullen into excavating Haven and recovering the nonperishable resources buried with the Chantry.

Josie opens the package from Maevaris Tilani. 

Schematics. A necklace tingling with magic. A nice note, thanking Josephine for her work collecting a few magisters to back Magistrix Tilani up on the floor of the Magisterium. At the very bottom of the wrapping is a small box, and Josie has to smother her gasp. She recognizes the colors of the packaging, the gilt lettering (even in Arcanum she would know that lettering). How had Maevaris known?

She lifts the box of Carastian candies up from among the detritus of the wrappings, opens it to take one very small piece. The nut-and-honey treat cracks satisfactorily in half, without bending the way most candies of the sort do after long travel in a humid saddlebag. It melts in her mouth, coating her tongue in the sweet bite of almond and honeyed toffee.

It would be polite to share. 

Josie looks inside her box of candies. It would even be prudent, to save such an exquisite treat, to share it with the Inquisitor and the rest of the advisors. Instead, Josie closes the lid on the box and tucks it away in her desk drawer.

She believes in a reasonable rate of return. She believes that working with the Inquisition, that saving Thedas, is the most important work she’ll ever do; that it will, in the long term, benefit her family beyond anything else she could accomplish within a single lifetime. When the effort she outlays begins to return, she knows not to turn it down.

(These candies, in other words, are hers.)


End file.
